Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Woman fabricates rape lie because she didn't want to pay for a taxi ride home and knew police would give her a free ride

An unnamed, unemployed, 25-year-old woman with personality disorders and an "attention seeking" problem fabricated a rape story after a dalliance with a male stripper because she didn't want to pay for a taxi ride home. She knew if she cried rape, police would give her a free ride. This week, she pled guilty, and has been convicted of providing police with a false statement.

It started last month when she met a stripper the Body Heat male strip show. He gave her his cellphone number and asked her to meet him at his nearby accommodation later that night. The woman was dropped off at the stripper's accommodation by a friend, but then decided to go home instead of meeting up with him.

The problem was, she had no way to get home other than to call a cab, but she didn't want to pay for one. So she dialed the emergency police number on her cellphone and told a police officer she had been raped by a man she met at the strip show. Shortly thereafter, a police officer was called out from his home to meet the woman and to start an investigation into the complaint. The officer took her to the police station where she met a second police officer and a rape crisis support worker.

After several hours speaking to police and the support worker, the woman got what she wanted: a free ride home.

The next day, a specialist police interviewer spent about three hours with the woman while she provided a formal statement. The woman again insisted she had been raped. An extensive and time-consuming police investigation failed to show any corroborative evidence to back up her claims.

Three days after her lengthy police interview, the woman went to the police station and provided a second statement that admitted she had made up the rape allegation. She admitted that what she wanted was a free ride home.

The woman will be sentenced next month. The woman's lawyer asked for continued name suppression, saying media coverage and the publication of her name would probably lead to a further deterioration of her mental health. The judge handling the case indicated he might consider a sentence of community detention.

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Every civilized society must strive to eradicate heinous criminality by punishing offenders, but it also must insure that the innocent aren't punished with them. The latter concern typically is absent from the public discourse. Accusations of serious criminality, especially alleged sexual wrongdoing, are often their own convictions in the high court of public opinion because the stigma is so severe, and because definitively proving innocence in a disputed sex case often is impossible. This blog highlights the injustices suffered by persons wrongly accused of serious criminality.